Hungary to keep Druzhba as main crude pipeline, foreign minister says
Updates throughout, with Szijjarto's comments, context
BUDAPEST, Oct 31 (Reuters) -The Druzhba pipeline will remain Hungary's primary route for crude oil imports, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Minsk on the sidelines of a conference.
The pipeline transports Russian crude through Belarus and Ukraine to Hungary and also Slovakia.
Supplies resumed last month to Hungary's energy company MOL MOLB.BU's refineries after a halt to shipments following Kyiv's addition of Russian company Lukoil to a sanctions list in June.
In contrast to many other European Union countries, Hungary seeks to maintain close political and business ties to Russia, including reliance on Russian energy.
Together with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it has been granted an exclusion from an EU embargo on Russian oil due to its lack of alternatives, but the EU has urged it to diversify its resources.
Szijjarto said in a Facebook video that Hungary has received 3.9 million metric tons of crude through the Druzhba pipeline and "shipments are continuous".
"In crude oil supplies, the Druzhba pipeline will continue to be the primary route as tests carried out on the Adriatic pipeline made it clear that there are capacity shortcomings," Szijjarto said.
Croatian firm Janaf, which operates the Adriatic pipeline, said in a reply to emailed Reuters' questions that repeated testings of crude oil flow on the pipeline provided precise data about "the realistic, reliable and secure capacities towards the Hungarian border at the annual level".
"The testing confirmed the readiness of JANAF to completely secure the supply for the two refineries owned by the MOL Group," it said.
Szijjarto said Hungary also received 6.2 billion cubic metres of Russian gas via Turkstream so far this year, and the construction of a nuclear plant by Rosatom was progressing well. The deal for that project was awarded to Rosatom without a tender in 2014 and is delayed by years.
On Wednesday, ambassadors and defence attaches of NATO members based in Budapest met at the U.S. embassy to discuss what Hungary describes as a policy of "economic neutrality," including its ties with Russia and China, the U.S. embassy said.
Reporting by Krisztina Than; editing by Barbara Lewis
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